I was walking to the shops the other day and suddenly it struck me that there was no purpose to this walking beyond the walking itself. When I set out my intent was to go and get some groceries – this was my purpose. But while ambling along by the banks of the Liesbeeck river, for a brief moment the story of my getting to the shops ceased and there was just the walking. No other story, just walking. And there was no other purpose in the world. Just this, what’s happening now, in this moment.
I’ve been writing quite a bit on this site about life purpose as something to be found, but now it seems that in fact there is nothing to be found. Your true purpose is whatever you are being or doing right now. As you read this your purpose is to sit and read. Or more precisely, one might say the reading is simply happening, you are not doing anything. There’s absolutely nothing beyond this reading, because anything that would be beyond it is a projection out of the Now into a past or future. A projection into one more story, one more fiction.
So now I will define true purpose as who you are when the stories about yourself have ceased. It is the life that lives through you, as you. How do you get to this? Stop the struggle, stop trying to make things happen when they’re just not happening. I’m glad I can blog about this so I can come back and remind myself when I forget (which happens often!).
There’s a quote from the Conversations with God series that comes to mind:
“There is nothing you have to be or do except what you are being or doing right now.”
Much of what I’ve written on this site concerns ways of finding clarity on life’s great questions: Who am I, what is my purpose, what really matters? As a life coach and hypnotherapist I have a range of processes that can be used to help people dive deeply into these questions and find answers or new directions that bring greater meaning to life. But what happens when the answers are elusive, or when you get several answers to one question?
I was thinking about this recently when I found myself in my characteristic condition of alternating frustratingly between two quite different modes of being. One part of me wants to be out there making a name for myself, and the other wants to sit quietly in a chair, contemplating life and letting the world go its way undisturbed. So who am I, which path should I follow? As I sat with this perennial question, I noticed a kind of quiet space develop around it. The question had always been with me and always would. It was a knowing that a straight answer would not be forthcoming, and that it wasn’t required. I could have several answers at a practical level about who I was and what I could do with my life, but at a deeper level, where I tried to connect everything, logic did not work. The tools and processes ran aground. The purpose of my life, then, was not a thing at all but rather a space between things. The question would be forever asked and never answered.
Perhaps it is never answered because the answer is hidden within the question itself. The answer is to be in the “I don’t know” space, in the not-knowing. When we find answers to things we discover certainty, and certainty hardens our self-image, our separation. But when we discover the question that refuses to be answered it is like stumbling upon a doorway into Being itself. Suddenly our words stop, our constant stream of self-defining thoughts have nowhere to go. In that moment there is space, the peace of knowing you do not need the answer. You don’t know, and that’s OK.
It can be a great comfort for people who are suffering an intractable problem or serious illness to finally put down the burden that they should know how to fix it or how to heal themselves. In the end you simply don’t know the purpose of your condition or what it means, and perhaps there is no meaning other than that it has brought you to the place of silence, of not knowing. You don’t know what death is, either, and if you’re honest, you don’t know what life is. Do whatever you can to know, but if the question evades your best efforts, perhaps it’s one of those questions … the questions that open up into Being itself. Sit with it, be with it, there’s nowhere to go, nothing to do. This is it.
The ancient Vedic texts known as the Upanishads declare:
You are what your deepest desire is.
As is your desire, so is your intention.
As is your intention, so is your will.
As is your will, so are your deeds.
As are your deeds, so is your destiny.
So if you want to know who you are, look to your deepest desires. Your desires become your destiny. But here’s the interesting question – where do your desires come from? It would seem it’s not ‘you’ who gives them to you – they apparently exist before you. Perhaps they come from your experience, from conditioning, from karma. Or perhaps they are simply given by the nonlocal mind, the quantum field of intelligence, what some people might call God. Wherever they come from, they are beyond the you who thinks they have any control over them.
From the desires comes our intent. We like to think we are the ones who set intent, but if our desires precede us, who is doing any setting of intent? Well, one might answer, one could choose to feel that desire and not do anything about it, not set any intent. That is a choice that one is making. And if one can choose not to set intent, one can also choose to set intent. Therefore one is doing something. But to this I might say, where does the thought come from to set intent or not set it? How does it emerge from nothing before it is thought? Perhaps it comes from the same place that desire comes from – from God, from nowhere.
It would seem there is nobody here to do anything, and yet we are here. Still we are here in the world, doing whatever it is we do, apparently setting intent and making things happen. It’s a paradox – but one with some positive implications. If you are only apparently setting intent and running your life, perhaps you can take some of the pressure off trying to get it right. You are doing things, organizing things, but at the same time you are not. It’s just happening. Does this mean we can simply stop doing anything at all, just sit on the couch? If couch-sitting is to happen it will happen, but it’s unlikely it will happen for very long for our desires will begin calling to us, shouting louder than our doing of doing nothing. The energy will begin to move. Something will happen. It’s all just happening again.
So where am I going with these thoughts? The point is this – if you want to discover the right use of intent, allow the self, the ego, to fall out of the equation. Nobody is doing anything, doing is arising from the desires, which arise from nowhere. So discover what your desires are and be present with them. Allow the inner ‘yes’ to arise and let that do the work, let it bring the opportunities and synchronicities. This is what one might call enlightened doing, a manner of doing that brings no harm to oneself or others, that allows inner peace. In the end, there is nothing we have to do except what we are doing right now. In this moment, in the Now, there is no story, no doing, and yet something is happening. This is enough, and everything.
Intention is the first act of creation. We reach inside and gain clarity on who we are and what we are here to do, and then we intend that this life comes into existence. Intention is the conscious declaration of what it is that we stand for, what it is that we are going to bring into the world.
